Ways to make enemies harder that don’t involve making them bullet sponges

[StaceyPowers]

I get so irritated when devs rely on making their enemies into bullet sponges to make them more difficult.

What are some better ways to make enemies more challenging?

[Shagger]

Ultra hard on Horizon Zero Dawn did this very well. Yes, on that difficulty mode the health of the enemies increased, but it also changed their bahaviour. They could see you from a far greater distance than before and they were way more aggressive. One has to stick and move and fight more tactically than on other difficulty settings.

[Kane99]

Yes I agree with you 100%. I hate when games just up the health of an enemy, but don't change anything else about them. Like Shagger said, in Horizon Zero Dawn, they make the AI smarter as you choose a higher difficulty. 

I think in Hitman it's similar, in that they add more enemies in the map, and also make it tougher to get away because their vision cones are a lot bigger. On top of that, if you're shot, or you use clothes from a person who was shot, the enemies will take notice of that and will get suspicious. I like when games higheten the AI to being a bit smarter about the situation. But, I also found that in Hitman, you can pop off a few shots and run in front of the enemies if you want haha. I guess this is a method to speed running. 

Anyway, I think games like Dark Souls do AI the best. If they can replicate something like that with other games, I could see it being much better. 

[Withywarlock]

F.E.A.R is usually held up as the masterclass in AI, not because it's highly advanced but rather its simple processes. Enemies have a list of priorities or goals, and will execute them or deprioritise them as they encounter the player. Communicate (triggering others' priorities), take cover, throw grenades, cover fire, blind fire and flank are some basic commands they can be prompted to perform.

If you want to read a particularly spooky creative writing exercise about enemies getting tougher, I'd recommend SCP-1633: The Most Dangerous Video Game, which is not wholly unlike Psycho Mantis from Metal Gear Solid.

Edited August 9, 2022 by Withywarlock

[Kane99]

2 hours ago, Withywarlock said:

F.E.A.R is usually held up as the masterclass in AI, not because it's highly advanced but rather its simple processes. Enemies have a list of priorities or goals, and will execute them or deprioritise them as they encounter the player. Communicate (triggering others' priorities), take cover, throw grenades, cover fire, blind fire and flank are some basic commands they can be prompted to perform.

If you want to read a particularly spooky creative writing exercise about enemies getting tougher, I'd recommend SCP-1633: The Most Dangerous Video Game, which is not wholly unlike Psycho Mantis from Metal Gear Solid.

F.E.A.R. was great in that regards, because I remember the enemies being pretty tough at times. As well, unpredictable, because I remember there were times where I felt like I cleared an area out, and then there's be one or two left coming after me. 

I never played the first MGS all the way through, but I heard many stories about the Psycho Mantis boss battle at the end. Changing the controller to port two allows you to fight him. Always thought that was a cool trick.  

[Clasher]

Giving them more speed makes them less easy to hit or beat and you need to have some speed or high maneuverability to be able to get a good hit at them.

God of war comes with this kind of bosses and before you could do a power move on them they are already behind you, the need to be really efficient with the controller Comes to play here before you could get past that boss and sometimes you get to fight two of them at the same time.

Really epic game play

[Heatman]

For me, I think that having enemies that evolve in the game based on your playstyle makes a lot of sense in making them more difficult and have you look for better new ways to beat them.

In MGS V, the system tracks your playstyle and have the enemies adjusted to it. If you use lots of headshot kills, they would start wearing helmet, if you usually attack in the night, they start wearing googles and so on. It's a good mechanics that makes enemies become difficult and challenging to deal with. 

[Kane99]

18 minutes ago, Heatman said:

For me, I think that having enemies that evolve in the game based on your playstyle makes a lot of sense in making them more difficult and have you look for better new ways to beat them.

In MGS V, the system tracks your playstyle and have the enemies adjusted to it. If you use lots of headshot kills, they would start wearing helmet, if you usually attack in the night, they start wearing googles and so on. It's a good mechanics that makes enemies become difficult and challenging to deal with. 

Oooh I like that idea. I believe some games do exactly that, they figure out your playstyle and what mistakes you make and will sometimes use them against you. I know it's not necessarily the same, but look at Left 4 Dead for example. I think they had some of the best AI, because when things are slow, they sometimes ramp it up. The AI is also random, so each time you play, it's not always the same way. Hordes come out at different times, tanks will spawn in whenever the hell they want to, or when you're going too slow. I wish more games utilized the Left 4 Dead AI, because I think it could create some unique experiences. 

[Heatman]

18 hours ago, Kane99 said:

Oooh I like that idea. I believe some games do exactly that, they figure out your playstyle and what mistakes you make and will sometimes use them against you. I know it's not necessarily the same, but look at Left 4 Dead for example. I think they had some of the best AI, because when things are slow, they sometimes ramp it up. The AI is also random, so each time you play, it's not always the same way. Hordes come out at different times, tanks will spawn in whenever the hell they want to, or when you're going too slow. I wish more games utilized the Left 4 Dead AI, because I think it could create some unique experiences. 

That's the beauty having such designs set up in the game's mechanics. In most cases, it prevents the game from being a boring exercise because you wouldn't haven't to be repeating exactly the same thing in your battle tactics. If you don't change, you will find it difficult to have a breakthrough. 

[Justin11]

Giving more fighting technique and invisibility they should also give some special strength which can be unlocked in certain stages and would give the player some Advantage at beating the boss.

[Shortie]

All too often this is the obvious way developers make their enemies harder and they completely overlook the fact they could d things such as make their enemies more smarter in combat such as dodging attacks, having more health or even invisibility. Don't get me wrong I love to fight enemies especially end bosses in a game but when it comes to just constant shooting rather than giving us something we have to work out to defeat them, it can get boring over time.

[Reality vs Adventure]

A pretty good tactic is to have a settings option where you increase your damage intake making you die easily. You could also change the damage settings on your enemy. But you would make them as weak as you are dying in two hits. They can make them have good AI too. Just last night I was shooting a bow at the enemy and as soon as I raise the bow, the enemy dodges. Every time. So I had no choice but to run at him and attack. If you had less ammo, you would also be more conservative what you shoot at. But I hate it trying to unload a clip on someone to finally kill them then reload while I get shot by others. Especially when you see them wearing a vest or armor, they try to give the illusion they are protected by most bullets but you still have to blast them in the head several times. A head shot should always be an instant kill. Some games even have arrows all stuck in them and still fighting. It looks cool, but not real. Nothing like fighting a warrior with an arrow stuck right through their eye socket and still fighting. Strength doesn't add a stronger brain. Strength doesn't give you extra synapsis in the brain or a different circulatory route. Head shots should always be killers. But of course that would take the fun away. I love shotguns for the specific reason to blast them apart one shot usually, and send them plastered to a wall and slide down real slow with chunks of internal components resisting gravity in thick consistency of blood and goo. If you think about it, leaving off those details is the reason for bullet sponges. Games need to focus on realistic effects of gun shot wounds and body parts flying off and not get censored like other countries do which could lead to unrealism and a video game developer drift towards bullet sponging. Gore respects the bullet. Extra gore leads to less bullets. So if you don't want bullet sponging, you need to respect the bullet and have lots of gore. 

[Kane99]

Also, another idea I think could work, is for AI to learn your attacks and counter accordingly. I think that would make gameplay unique each time you play, because you may have to change up your tactics if things aren't working anymore. Of course I imagine that'd be tough to develop into a game, as the AI would need to be smart enough to figure out your moves. And we as humans, don't always follow the same pattern. But, I think something like that can be worked out where it's tougher as you go along because the AI are learning your moves and tactics. 

Do some games do that now? I know back in the day in COD games,  if you stayed in one location for too long, the enemies will smoke you out by tossing a grenade at you. So kinda like that, but at a higher level, where the AI continues to learn as you play.

 

[killamch89]

Alien Isolation did a brilliant job of this by making the Xenomorphs adapt to your tactics so you couldn't keep depending on the same strategy to make progress in the game. I also hate the damage sponge mechanic as well.

[Justin11]

On 11/27/2022 at 1:07 AM, Kane99 said:

Also, another idea I think could work, is for AI to learn your attacks and counter accordingly. I think that would make gameplay unique each time you play, because you may have to change up your tactics if things aren't working anymore. Of course I imagine that'd be tough to develop into a game, as the AI would need to be smart enough to figure out your moves. And we as humans, don't always follow the same pattern. But, I think something like that can be worked out where it's tougher as you go along because the AI are learning your moves and tactics. 

Do some games do that now? I know back in the day in COD games,  if you stayed in one location for too long, the enemies will smoke you out by tossing a grenade at you. So kinda like that, but at a higher level, where the AI continues to learn as you play.

 

It possible because in soccer games the opponent have several playing patterns if you are in the single player mode , the higher the difficulty the stronger the teams are, this functions are programmable and the game developers could develop a program that could do this same functions for combat and bosses you encounter in-game.